Is D still alive?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2011 16:25:49 -0500, retard <re at tard.com.invalid> wrote:

> Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:14:04 -0500, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I think as D matures
>> and hopefully gets more enterprise support, these problems will be
>> history.
>
> This is the classic chicken or the egg problem. I'm not trying to be
> unnecessarily mean. Enterprise support is something you desperately need.
> Consider dsource, wiki4d, d's bugzilla etc. It's amazing how much 3rd
> party money and effort affects the development. Luckily many things are
> also free nowadays such as github.

I'd say the last 1-2 years have been extremely productive compared to the  
previous years combined.  I feel like the growth has been better than  
linear.

I'm not saying enterprise support is waiting in the wings for D to be  
"fully mature", and it might take someone developing a for-sale compiler  
to get to that point.  But even without that kind of support, I expect  
that usable stability in dmd will come about sooner rather than later.

>> The statements I made are not a property of D, they are a property of
>> the lack of backing/maturity.  I'm sure when Haskell was at the same
>> maturity stage as D, and if it had no financial backing/support
>> contracts, it would be just as much of a gamble.
>
> But Haskell developers have uninterruptedly received funding during the
> years.

If I understand you correctly, that's not what I'm talking about.  I'm  
talking about a company who *uses* haskell being able to go to a  
haskell-supplier company and say "I want you guys to guarantee you will  
fix any bugs we encounter."  If that's what you mean, then I stand  
corrected, but then that makes Haskell not a good comparison here...

>> You seem to think that D is inherently flawed because of D, but it's
>> simply too young for some tasks.  It's rapidly getting older, and I
>> think in a year or two it will be mature enough for most projects.
>
> I've heard this before. I've also heard the 64-bit port and many other
> things are done in a year/month or two. The fact is, you're overly
> optimistic and these are all bullshit. When I come back here in a year or
> two, I have full justification to laugh at your stupid claims.

Open-source development takes time, and is hard to predict, because  
typically it comes from free time, which isn't guaranteed.  Because it's  
hard to predict doesn't mean a) "it's all bullshit", b) it doesn't make  
progress, and c) it will never succeed.

In two years if you come back here and laugh at me, I will again shake my  
head in pity that you care so much about such things.  I gave me best  
estimate, and maybe I'm off.  We aren't on trial here, or having lives  
depend on us.  You need to find a more constructive outlet for your  
pessimism.  Well, it would be nice if it was simply on another newsgroup.

-Steve